Archive for the Reggae/Ska/Dancehall Category

So Dutty Rock is the biggest Sean Paul album. It’s got Gimme the Light, Get Busy, Like Glue, International Affair, and the best song on the album, Jukin’ Punny, which was a total sleeper. Sean Paul was HUGE when this one came out, if you remember We Be Burnin’, Give It Up to Me, and especially Temperature getting radio play that could rival Justin Bieber. But by the time the actual album came out, the singles had lost some steam and he was forgotten pretty soon after. He actually released an album after this one, in 2009 if I recall correctly, and it basically got ignored. It wasn’t as good anyway.

So the reason I picked this over Dutty Rock is mainly the consistency and the nostalgia. Both albums have their ups and downs but I feel like The Trinity had more good songs. So fewer bad ones as well. If you haven’t heard Sean Paul (shame on you), he’s pretty simple. No lyrical profundity here. We Be Burnin is about smoking weed. Yardie Bone is about how many women enjoy his large penis. Never Gonna Be the Same is about Jamaica and how much he misses his old life there. But besides that. Party lyrics and party beats!

Again, if you have a problem with his voice, don’t give up, just keep listening until you understand it.

When I was in, like, 7th grade, before I knew a lot about OutKast, Sean Paul was basically the only music I listened to. When I found out about Limewire I got a bit more music. I started listening to Sean Paul and OutKast. I basically listened to like a bunch of Dancehall (Sean Paul, Shaggy, Damian Marley, Collie Buddz, Elephant Man, etc.) and then OutKast. And that was it. For quite a few years. I’ve matured exponentially since then as far as music, but I still love all the stuff I first loved. So that’s why Sean Paul is awesome.

…aaaaaaaaaand… that was a lazy review.

1. Fire Links Intro
2. Head in the Zone
3. We Be Burnin’
4. Send It On
5. Ever Blazin’
6. Eye Deh a Mi Knee
7. Give It Up to Me
8. Yardie Bone feat. Wayne Marshall
9. Never Gonna Be the Same
10. I’ll Take You There
11. Temperature
12. Breakout
13. Head to Toe
14. Connection feat. Nina Sky
15. Straight Up
16. All On Me feat. Tami Chynn
17. Change the Game feat. Looga Man & Kid Kurup
18. The Trinity

I’ve been wanting to add a Reggae section for a while (including Ska [including Ska Punk even though that’s technically Rock] and Dancehall) because there’s quite a few albums I can add to it. So my next few posts will probably be in this section. Um. Damian Marley. Son of Bob. The biggest complaint I hear about him is “Baw I can’t understand what he’s saying! =(” I’ve been listening to Reggae since before I even really got into music, Sean Paul was my favorite artist for the longest time way back when. So listening to so much of him and quite a bit of Shaggy as well, I got a feel for how the Jamaican dialect sounds, what the slang means, and how to make sense of it. So when people say they can’t understand what Damian is saying (his accent is actually easier to understand than Sean Paul and Shaggy) it kinda makes me mad since that’s not really saying it’s bad but they still refuse to listen to it. Even though to get over that problem listening to it MORE would be the proper thing to do.

And listening to more of him really shouldn’t be that hard. His voice, even if you can’t understand it, is phenomenal. If you remember my review of Busdriver’s album Jhelli Beam I said that he had this control over melody to the point where he rapped and ALMOST sounded like he was singing but you could still tell he was rapping. Damian Marley is the exact opposite. It’s almost easy to mistake this album for a Hip-Hop album because Damian’s delivery is so talky/chanty that you can easily think he’s rapping in songs like In 2 Deep for instance but he never loses so much of his melody that he actually IS Rapping. There’s a fine line that he’s very careful not to cross.

Of course, I’m just a single opinion. Wikipedia has this album labeled as Reggae fusion. Specifically, a fusion with Hip-Hop. I’d say that’s a misunderstanding of the album’s production. A lot of it is typical Reggae. The chord structures and accent on the upbeat in songs like There For You, Welcome to Jamrock, and We’re Gonna Make It make those songs pure Reggae. But most of the other songs have a Pop-styled beat that could be confused for Hip-Hop because they would be good for rapping over. But all the beats (except maybe All Night) have this distinctly African sound that, combined with Pop, form Dancehall. My understand of Dancehall is that it’s the chord structure of Reggae with the beat of Pop music. I’m sure most people don’t care about music being put in its appropriate genre as much as I do. It’s a “passion” of mine. So just listen to it. It’s good.